


a bargain with my mother's god

by essektheylyss (midnightindigo)



Series: sanctuary in shadow [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Agnostic Ramblings, Betting Your Life, Essek is ace because I say he is, M/M, Philosophizing, Skipping church because of your catholic guilt: the fic, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide mention, until Matthew Mercer himself strikes me down (and probably beyond), we've all been there am I right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26902822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightindigo/pseuds/essektheylyss
Summary: The sun is out in Rosohna, but the shades of Essek’s tower are drawn against the light.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Series: sanctuary in shadow [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1964074
Comments: 11
Kudos: 114





	a bargain with my mother's god

**Author's Note:**

> All I do is project onto Essek and today is no exception!
> 
> Also if you follow me on tumblr you may know I've been muttering about different calendar systems across Wildemount and I managed to sneak that in also, so it's a good day.

The moment sunlight hits his eyelids, he groans and turns over pressing his face into the space between Caleb’s shoulder blades, shielding his eyes from it as a hiss leaks through his teeth.

Caleb shifts to look at him over his shoulder, and Essek wraps his arms tighter around his chest and mumbles into his spine, “Go back to sleep.”

“We are at your place.”

“Yes, I am aware.”

“There is sun.”

And it dawns on him. _Fuck._ He swears heavily in undercommon into Caleb’s freckled skin, then hisses again and sits up. 

_Fuck._

“Is it one of your holy days?” Caleb asks, and Essek nods wearily, waving his questions off with one hand and rubbing his eyes as he pulls closed the heavy velvet curtains that he keeps for this purpose alone.

He meanders back to the bed, blinking against the sunspots on his vision, and slips beneath the covers again.

“Ah, so those are not ornamental,” Caleb drawls, and Essek drops his head back onto the pillow.

“No, they are not.” He runs through every word for idiot he knows in any language before the flare on his vision fades, and he looks up at Caleb, who seems to think the situation warrants some kind of explanation. He’s sure it does, of course, but he’s spent over a century trying to justify devotion to this thing that he doesn’t care for, and he can’t do it to Caleb, because if he does, it will be only the truth. “My mother is going to kill me.”

“Do you need to attend some kind of… worship? Ceremony? I can join you, if it would make it easier?”

Essek laughs shakily through his teeth, pressing his hands over his eyes though the light is gone. He feels like a gods-damned child, worrying about his mother’s reaction, but he isn’t enough of a child to lie to her today, not when he knows how many other things she could make him answer for, if she cared to ask. “No. No, I can’t. And they are for the dens, anyway, so I doubt they will allow you.”

The silence stretches between them, and Essek can’t bring himself to speak or meet Caleb’s eyes. “Are holy days designated in advance? If I remember correctly—“ and Essek knows he does; he knows what phrasing he used to avoid answering questions about his family’s worship in depth when they’d arrived, “you said we would simply know.”

He nods and sits up again. It is far too early for religious discussion, and though the blinding light outside his windows is obscured, he can see it in his mind still. “I did not lie,” he laughs hollowly, and shrugs. “But they are set in advance; following the moon cycle, I believe.”

“Ah, so you do answer to the heavens for some aspect of your time-keeping,” Caleb smirks, and he isn’t really in the mood for that argument again, but he also knows debates are the best way to get him out of a shit mood, so he bites.

“The _dens_ answer to the heavens,” he growls. “Those of us who care more for the arcane are quite content to utilize more useful methods.”

“Ah yes, your ‘ley lines,’” Caleb says, with air quotes, and the mischievous spark in his eyes only makes Essek want to kiss him, but he’s choked by the blasphemy of it. It is never so strong as it is on these days, the questions—and the guilt. “Please explain to a farmer the use of ley lines in when to plant their crops.”

Essek smiles, with an edge like a knife. “Please explain to a farmer that there are more temperate climates in which to raise their crops.”

“Please remind me how pleasant the Ghostlands are for farming?” Caleb laughs. Instead, Essek slumps forward, curling into himself, and noses Caleb’s shoulder until Caleb catches his chin. “What’s wrong? Will you tell me?”

With a long breath, Essek closes his eyes, the hand on his face calming the jitter wracking his shoulders. It isn’t quite a tremble, just an energy, that he can feel building in his limbs. It’s only an echo of fear, but it will shake him apart from the inside if he allows it to, and he has in the past, until he went looking for ways to pull the feeling from him like poison from a wound, with increasingly undignified methods. 

“Yes,” he agrees, “but… we should get dressed, find some kind of breakfast.” He knows he’s being suspicious, knows Caleb is watching him with the furrow in his brow that means he’s worried he’s retreating into himself, and he can’t blame him. That is what he’s doing, after all.

It’s just easier to fall apart with no one watching, certainly not someone he loves.

He keeps far more pastries in the house now, so they sit on the couch in the study with a plate between them and pull apart the layers of currant-filled croissants that are normally reserved for Jester’s visits, since she’d gotten over the difference in texture between the Coast and the Dynasty’s pastries and stopped arriving from Nicodranas with her own. 

Caleb nudges his knee with his toes, and as he speaks casually, pulling apart the flaky layers of his breakfast, Essek’s stomach curdles again. “So. What do these holy days of your den entail?”

Essek sinks back into the cushions further. He’s over a century old; he shouldn’t feel like such a fucking child. “There is a fast in advance, and each den gathers in a… I suppose the most accurate word in common is chapel, though that isn’t exactly what it is. It is a twelve-sided chamber that all of the primary den manors have, with a glass roof, to accentuate the light.”

“That does not seem like it would be comfortable for you.”

“No, no, it is… not pleasant, at first, but you get used to it.” He remembers long days spent with headaches behind his eyes, going to sleep exhausted by the end of them. In recent years he has found it easier, now that he’s grown, but even so, he enjoys it even less, somehow. “Still, I… when I was young I enjoyed it a lot. I find it… almost easier to focus, when I deprive myself.”

“Ah, is that your excuse for forgetting meals when you are working?” Caleb teases, toeing at his leg again, but he only sinks further. 

“It certainly made me used to it. The fast involves… well, anything and everything. Food, drink—“

“Sex?” Caleb asks, half-innocently, but Essek exhales and closes his eyes. 

“You know my… general disregard for the need for it,” he says. “But even beyond that, it is required that you completely limit physical interaction. When I was a child, the food and drink—well, it felt like a challenge, and I was more than happy to exceed expectations. When I was older, it seemed… foolish. I’d gotten used to the deprivation in that way, and I didn’t care much for, well, most forms of physical interaction, and it seemed like such an ordeal to those around me…” He shrugs and stretches his feet across Caleb’s legs. “It seemed very false, eventually. And I already had no belief in it, so…”

It’s foolish, how anxious it makes him. It’s silly. 

“I knew I was a bit of an imposter in my mother’s religion as a child, but it didn’t feel like I might be found out until recently,” he smiles, and it feels like he is baring his teeth more than anything else. “And I… I liked the ritual of it. I enjoyed it, in spite of it all. And that has changed, in recent years, but… I don’t _like_ being an imposter.”

“Then why did you choose it?” Caleb asks, and they’re onto a different subject, and Essek knows what he’s asking.

“Because I figured that was all I was good for?” He clenches his fists against his thighs and sets the crumb-strewn plate on the side table. “Before you’d arrived, well… I believed it inevitable that I would die a heretic without leaving this place. That that was the path that had been placed before me, and…” his grin widens again. “Like I said, I have always been more than happy to exceed expectations.”

Caleb leans forward and takes his hand, tugging on it, and Essek lets him pull him into his lap. The pressure in his chest thinking of it does not alleviate, but it does feel as though he is sharing the burden for a moment. 

“So you cannot attend this worship because… you would have to lie about not fasting?”

And this is where they start to get into his idiosyncrasies, because he is not unused to lying, especially not to his mother. But he does not trust that, if there is an entity behind this thing his mother prays to, then there is no guarantee she will not know he is lying, and there is no guarantee she will not question what else he has lied about. 

He prefers the shadows for a reason. 

“I cannot lie to my mother today,” he whispers. “I mean, I could, but you and I both know that I am far better at lies of omission. Better to make my excuses and brave her disappointment tomorrow.”

Caleb tightens his arms around Essek’s shoulders. “Essek.”

It’s easier to let all of his rage and fear fall from tongue when he can’t see Caleb’s face, when he is speaking to open air. Someday perhaps there will be enough space to pull the last of the poison from him, but for now he will spit and spit until he is satisfied that he has expunged enough to keep him alive for a while longer.

“It was a… a privilege,” he sneers, echoing his mother’s words, crooned so lovingly as if they meant something to him, as if he’d spent any time beyond the high iron walls of the den manor, as if he knew what another life could’ve looked like. “It was never a choice, because what else would one choose? And I should be—I should’ve been grateful, I understand that now, but… it is hard to know when it is kindness instead of pity.”

He’s trembling now, wrapped up in Caleb’s lap, and everything he’s said this morning has felt tremendously childish, but Caleb catches his hands in his and rubs circles into his palms, easing some of the tension that’s contributing to the tremor. 

He lets his head fall back against Caleb’s shoulder and closes his eyes. A century of this has nested in his mind, and shaking it away has proven impossible, even now that he has found light in other ways. And there’s a bit of light leaking through his windows still, and if he could hold a pearl to his forehead and turn back to yesterday, perhaps he could avoid all of this, take the punishment he knows attending devotion will offer him and live up to his mother’s expectations.

“It has not asked anything,” he breathes, the air leaking between his teeth. “It has not asked devotion, or, or… or suffering, or pain, and yet we offer all of these things to it, not knowing what it is or what it wants from us.” Finally he looks up to meet Caleb’s eyes, tight beneath his furrowed brow, and he knows this is probably more of a mess than his partner has ever seen him, even compared to the night he laid out all of his sins bare at his feet. 

“And if it is a god, then it has not deigned to communicate its wishes. And if it is a benevolent divinity… then what point does it see in these displays? My mother spends days at a time staring into the sun, transfixed. I have seen her blind herself, returning for supper with eyes red and wet, wiping away streaks of tears that have fallen for hours, and this is a being to whom I am expected to bow?”

Caleb doesn’t say anything, only presses a kiss to his temple, and he leans into his touch, closing his eyes. There is not another person currently in the Dynasty that he can express this to, and not another person he would be comfortable seeing him like this. 

“And it is… worse, now,” he exhales slowly, “it is worse since… since I returned to the chapel, and I made a deal with my mother’s god. And since then, returning for devotion has been… well, it has felt like perhaps I am walking to my death, when I step foot there—like I have signed the warrant for my own execution.”

He chuckles, pressing his forehead into Caleb’s shoulder. “After my father died, I… I spent a while, at home with her—out of some kind of duty, or obligation, or, or guilt.” He can feel tears choked in his throat that he won’t allow to fall, not yet at least, not until he can let go of everything that is caught with them. “And after I returned here… that was when I stole them.” The silence between them is sharp enough that he can feel it piercing his chest like a knife. “While I was there, I went to the chapel well after Mother had fallen asleep, and I was alone in that manor with only my thoughts and an offer and her god, and I told the luxon, under the light of the moon, that I was going to find out what it was—and if I was wrong—if it was divine after all, if it was merciful—then I would gladly go to the death I knew I deserved.”

“Essek,” Caleb breathes again, and he cannot help but notice that his name is the only word Caleb has spoken in some time. 

It is this knowledge that breaks the levee holding everything back, and he presses his fingers to his eyes to collect the tears as they fall. “So days of devotion are not…” he can barely speak around them, and he inhales sharply in a futile attempt to collect himself. “They are not… they do not feel safe anymore. The ritual of them, they used to remind me of spells, in a way, and that brought me comfort even when they were otherwise uncomfortable or tiresome, but… now they only remind me of what I have bargained away.”

Caleb’s fingers comb through his hair, still messy from sleep, and still he has not spoken, so Essek continues to meander through all of the thoughts that have followed him for years. 

“If the luxon is truly divine, and it desires some kind of suffering as a show of devotion, then what greater gift can I offer than my death?” he asks, and Caleb is shaking too now, and finally places his hands on either side of Essek’s face, forcing him to look into his eyes, and shakes his head.

“No,” he says, and the warm pressure of his hands feels like the only thing holding Essek together right now. “No. I have fought gods with more power than your mother’s, and that is not a bet that I will allow you to keep, if it were to come to that, gods be damned. Do you understand that? You do not trade your life away for its divinity. If it would care to steal you away to a distant plane, I will follow your soul to return it here. It has consumed you for a century, and it does not get you any longer. _I do._ ”

Essek gives him a watery laugh. “That is certainly dramatic.”

“It is,” Caleb says, with utmost gravity in his face. “But it is also the promise I am making to you, if this is something that causes you this much fear.”

He considers disputing it, but he can still feel the tear tracks on his face. He leans into Caleb, letting his lips meet his brow, fingers grasping at his hands still clutching his head. “You are far more of a beacon for my soul than it has ever been.”

“Good,” Caleb exhales, and lets some of the intensity fade from how tightly he is holding onto Essek. He peppers kisses down his nose and across his eyelids, pulling them against the couch. “Why did you make this bargain?”

“Because I was arrogant,” Essek sighs. “Because I felt that I owed it to my mother, who had already lost so much because of me.”

“You seem to believe that there is something out there to have heard you.” Essek lets himself sink into Caleb’s chest, and is grateful that he does not have to meet his eyes now. 

“I don’t know if there is,” he murmurs. “But if I am wrong—“

“I did not realize you harbored such doubt in your own reason.”

“I…” He shakes his head. “I have studied enough to know that there are few limits to possibility, and if there are so few limits, then I cannot rule out the possibility that I am wrong. Perhaps I… perhaps there is a part of me that hopes I am, that my family has not spent a millennium praying to a falsehood.”

Caleb freezes beneath him, and he glances up to see the slack in his jaw before he smiles unconvincingly. “That is something I can understand.”

“Oh?”

“My parents…” He sighs and tightens his hold on Essek’s shoulders, and Essek imagines it is more for his own strength now. “It was suggested to me, by Master Ikithon, that my parents asked him to do… whatever it took, to make me fit to serve the Empire.” Watching the lines deepen in Caleb’s face, Essek shivers, and pulls a throw from the back of the couch, draping it over them both. “I do not think they had any idea the lengths to which he would go to do so, but…”

“I don’t think even blind loyalty would have made them accept that, if it was put to them outright.” Perhaps it doesn’t mean anything to offer these reassurances, but Caleb’s face is so dark that he cannot help himself.

“My father was a soldier,” Caleb said. “He had already pledged his life to the Empire once before. I cannot know for certain.”

“And your mother?”

“I don’t know. I was… young, when I left for the academy. And I was not much older when my mind was twisted against me. Against them. I can’t…” He laughs one a single, miserable laugh, and Essek’s heart lurches with how horrible of a sound it is. “I did not know my mother and father for long enough to say if this is a cause they could’ve believed in.”

Essek cannot begin to imagine the kind of loyalty that would lead someone to that—but he can, of course; his mother has died several times of her own volition, ritually, only to be reborn into another. His mother told him it was another step in his father’s journey when he had perished beneath Bazzoxan. His mother has asked him time and again why he has not yet accepted consecution.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs, but Caleb just lets his lips rest on the crown of his head, and he shivers thinking of all of the ways he continues to scorn his mother’s god. 

“For what?”

“For making this morning so dreary,” he scoffs. “The sun is out in Rosohna, and the shades are drawn.”

“If I had wanted sun, I’d have stayed in Nicodranas,” Caleb laughs, and Essek can feel this laugh rumble against his ear, where it is pressed against his chest. It’s as warm as the sun outside, but he is infinitely happier here, in the shadow of this love. “Would I love you as much as I do, if I were not comfortable in the shadows?”

There are no words for how much Essek loves him in return, so he wordlessly sits up and wraps his arms around his shoulders and buries his face in the base of his neck, and thinks that no safety that a religion could offer will ever come close to this.

**Author's Note:**

> I will... probably write a scene of Essek making his bargain, because the image will not let me go, so I'll probably tack it on as a second work in a series.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think.


End file.
